SUBSTACK ARCHIVE
Alina Tenser
Holding Space: Objects & Empathy
(L) Full Sleeve (tinted), 2025, 64"x 26" x 8", Vinyl, zipper (R) Full Sleeve (white) , 2025, 64"x 26" x 8", Vinyl, zipper
Moving between sculpture, video, and performance, Ukrainian-born artist ALINA TENSER’S practice foregrounds object hood and its relationship to the body. In her ongoing series entitled Sleeves, the body is absent but implied. Both life-size and modest renderings of these minimalist forms suggest domestic use; storage bins for accoutrements such as clothing or cosmetics. The only embellishment, a nylon zipper, dictates its structure, becoming a framing device. Hanging on the wall in two dimensions, these opaque forms in sheer hues of clear, gray, chlorine and amber, take the shape of their armatures, overlapping and flattened. When zipped into three dimensions as with Tenser’s Container for Utterance series, they become enclosures for concrete sculptures in the form of letters, a nod to the artist’s native Cyrillic language. More recent variations on these works contain a provocation and solicitation, holding space for meaning to emerge within the confines of the sculpture.
Works L-R; Corridor, 2025 (in progress), Sleeved Meander, 2023 , Full Sleeve, 2025
In older works, such as her series Corridors, comprised of cylinders installed on the wall, and Center of the Center, made from steel rods and metal tubes, a circular path is traced within their geometric forms, inducing a meditation of sorts. Transforming the materiality of her industrial materials-steel, metal, concrete, nylon-she imbues them with a feminine sensibility; supplanting the mechanical with the divine, the functional with the exquisite, the inanimate with the empathic. Tenser’s graceful works invite rather than propel, embracing humanity and our imperfections within.
We visited Tenser at her DUMBO studio and documented her works in progress while in residence at Triangle Art. For more about Alina Tenser & info on her small edition for sale through JEFF MARFA, reach out here.
JEFF: How many years have you had a studio practice?
AT: I moved into my first studio in 2007—a small space I shared with Ada Friedman off the Jefferson stop in Bushwick.
(L-R) Sleeved Meander, 2023 , Full Sleeve, 2025, Corridor, 2025 (in progress)
JEFF: What is your medium / are your mediums?
AT: I work across sculpture, video, and performance, but my practice is rooted in object-making. Materials range from steel to vinyl fabric to cast concrete, depending on what the piece needs. The videos and performances extend from that sculptural base and let me explore form in relation to time, space, and the frame of the screen. But all of these approaches are scratching at the same itch: how form engages both somatic and cognitive perception.
JEFF: What are the themes or ideas you are working with when you are standing in front of or thinking about a work?
AT: It sounds simple, but I’m thinking about how to make interactive form. How a form signals interactivity through scale, materiality, and certain affordances. I’m especially interested in engagement that happens through looking—when interaction unfolds through perception and fantasy rather than physical contact.
The fantasy of the object, and of one’s body in relation to it.
Working in that space, I’m always thinking about generosity—the generosity of offering stimulus, and the generosity of leaving space for interpretation. Trusting the viewer to engage on their own terms. Many of my sculptures relate to the post-minimalist moment—a time when artists were deeply fluent in formalism but also aware of its limits, and began contextualizing their work in more political and personal ways.
Corridor, 2024 15" x 15" x 8", Expanded metal, satin ribbon, steel
JEFF: Do you work in series?
AT: Yes, I often work in series—sometimes as a way of thinking about reproduction or standardization, like Charlotte Posenenske’s Vierkantrohre Serie. There’s always something relational about it for me: one piece may depend on another, echo its scale, or respond to its form.
JEFF: Why do you choose to work in many mediums?
AT: I work across many mediums and processes because that’s how I arrive at the complexity I’m after. I’m always referencing the things of this world, and that begs a kind of multiplicity. On a more personal level, I need several modes happening at once to stay fully engaged. I sort of ping-pong between them, keeping my attention elastic.
JEFF: What are you currently excited about working on in the studio?
AT: I’m working on a video series called Border Aggregation, shot from above, showing a vibrating table as it rejects ordinary objects—a glass of water, a paring knife, an apple. Everything gets jostled to the edges and falls out of frame. It reads as both slapstick and catastrophic. At the same time, I’m sewing rectangular prisms, an ongoing series titled Sleeves, out of industrial vinyls used in marine and welding contexts. I tend to welcome multiple, seemingly unrelated projects happening in parallel—they feed one another in surprising ways.
JEFF: When you're in your flow working on a piece, how does it make you feel?
AT: Flow in the studio is one of the best feelings I know. Since I often work with unfamiliar materials or processes, there’s usually a period of learning—almost like picking up a new language. When I hit that point of fluency and have multiple things percolating, I make decisions that feel unexpected and take me by surprise. This is when I know something good is happening.
JEFF: What would you be doing—or what are you doing—when you're not making art?
AT: Parenting and teaching make up the other two-thirds of my life. Both deeply shape my practice—they keep me alert, empathetic, and open to perspectives beyond my own.
(L) Full Sleeve (tinted), 2025, 64"x 26" x 8", Vinyl, zipper (R) Full Sleeve (white) , 2025, 64"x 26" x 8", Vinyl, zipper
EXHIBITIONS CURRENT & UPCOMING
Jack Shainman, The School in Kinderhook NY, General Conditions